Turkish Foreign Policy

Rich in its spatial scope, this edited collection provides an extensive and detailed overview of contemporary Turkish foreign policy. From the founding principles of foreign policy in the early republic to changing patterns during the second half of the 20th century, this text not only charts underexplored periods in Turkish foreign policy history, but also offers a fresh analysis of recent events, with new challenges ever-emerging in this region. This volume is essential reading for students, scholars and professionals of International Relations, foreign policy and international law who would like to study Turkish foreign policy.

In the context of rapid developments in Turkey and its broader geopolitical environment over the past decade, this book examines and conceptualises Turkey’s changing foreign policy towards a more assertive and revisionist paradigm. More specifically it details the rhetorical and practical-political content of what is termed ‘Lausanne Syndrome’; namely, Turkey’s efforts in recent years – under the AKP government – to revise the geopolitical status quo brought about by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) in its broader neighbourhood. By employing a Neoclassical Realist theoretical framework and paying particular attention to ideational factors, the book argues that, contrary to the more widely known ‘Sèvres Syndrome’, which predicts a more cautious brand of Turkish foreign policy, the ‘Lausanne Syndrome’ is associated with a different political-ideological current and predicts a more revisionist type of foreign policy behaviour, even though it has emerged out of the same historical circumstances and been triggered by the same external geopolitical factors. The impact of the ‘Lausanne Syndrome’ on Turkey’s foreign policy behaviour is subsequently tested in four case studies from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East: Cyprus, Libya, Syria, and Iraq.

This book covers selected topics on contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy to understand and critically analyze the ideas, discourses, actors, processes and structures in the foreign policymaking. It provides the readers with a compilation of chapters on the critical analysis of Turkey’s changing positionality and foreign policy identity. In doing so, it draws on the tools and perspectives offered by the critical theories and approaches in International Relations and relevant disciplines. Most of the chapters included in this project deal with the dramatic metamorphoses that took place in Turkish Foreign Policy during the period when the Justice and Development Party ruled and their ongoing consequences.

Since the cold war ended, it has become an international field of study, with new material from China, the former Soviet Union and Europe. This volume takes stock of where these new materials have taken us in our understanding of what the cold war was about and how we should study it.

With the end of Cold War discipline the world has entered a new era. Parameters have changed; new handicaps as well as new opportunities have been created for countries. Turkey as a neighbor of former USSR, a member of NATO and located at the center of a sensitive region covered by Caucasus, Balkans and Middle East, has been affected by the end of Cold War radically. Turkey has lost some of her bargaining cards in the new era and therefore has needed new arguments. This need encouraged Turkey to take active steps in Post Cold War era. This book analyzes Turkey s relations with US, EU, Balkans, Middle East, Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia, China and Japan. At the same time, effects of economic crises and domestic developments on foreign policy, Turkish model in Turkish foreign policy, water conflict and Kurdish problem are analyzed as well. To conclude, it is possible to argue that although Turkey lost some of her bargaining cards in Post Cold War era, new developments pushed Turkey to the center of world politics rather then to periphery. Contributors: Meliha Benli Altunisik, Deniz Ülke Aribogan, Hüseyin Bagci, Idris Bal, Zeyno Baran, Fulya Kip Barnard, Erol Bulut, Ibrahim S. Canbolat, Saziye Gazioglu, Ramazan Gözen, Saban Kardas, H. Bülent Olcay, Cengiz Okman, Henry E. Paniev, Victor Panin, Dirk Rochtus, Faruk Sönmezoglu, Gül Turan, Ilter Turan, Mustafa Türkes, Nasuh Uslu.

This book explores how Turkey's contested national identity has affected its foreign policysince the late Ottoman era. The book takes a constructivist approach, asserting that identity matters for foreign policy decisions, but it separates itself from statist approaches by bringing identity question into domestic politics.

Turkish foreign policy and its implications for Eurasian security.

By using the core insights of the constructivist approach in International Relations, this book analyzes the foreign policy behavior of Turkey. It argues that throughout its modern history, Turkey's foreign policy has been affected by its Western identity created in the years following the War of Independence.